Typically, after completion of a medical procedure, the physician dictates notes about the procedure, describing exactly what was done during the procedure, observations the physician made during the procedure, medications administered, etc. Such operative notes are reports written (either on a paper document or in an electronic document) to document the details of a surgery. The physician typically dictates these notes into some form of audio recording device or system. If the medical procedure was recorded on video, the physician might dictate his notes while viewing the recorded video, perhaps mentioning in his dictation the timestamps of certain key frames and what was happening in those frames. The dictation (audio recording) may be provided to a transcription service, which produces a written record of the dictation for the patient's file. The time spent creating the written record, reviewing the written record and storing the written record can be very time consuming. Therefore, a method of creating a written record of surgery in a quicker and easier manner is desired.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,031,526 to Shipp discloses a voice controlled medical text and image reporting system. Using this system, a physician issues a verbal or manual command in order to capture a selected still image from a video camera being used during a medical procedure, and dictates his or her observations concerning the medical procedure and the captured image. A voice recognition module converts the dictated audio observations into viewable and editable text which is integrated with the captured still image in a word processing module, so as to form an electronic medical record which can be edited and viewed as well as printed. However, all information and text in the electronic medical record formed using the system of Shipp must be created during or after the surgical procedure, which is inefficient from a time standpoint.
A system allowing for creation of an operative note during a surgical procedure that minimizes the effort and time to create the operative note is desired.